Ranking Every Book I Read in 2024

it's a pasti erotica about Tarzan and Doc Savage... the final result just felt a little Edge lordy to me and it felt kind of uninteresting sort of stunty I don't know it just I didn't really connect with it

fire upon the deep I just went into this in depth I'm not going to say much new about this that I didn't say in the other one

I think this is the least favorite of his books that I've read... overall pretty good I found it slightly predictable and it lacked the snap and The Verve and the beauty of Shaw's other work

the prospectus gives short bios of the most well-known most influential science fiction writers to that time found some interesting tidbits in there it put me on to some people that I wasn't as familiar with unfortunately the authors or at least one of them there were three of them had a tendency to spoil a lot of the books that they described

kofka America is his first novel it was never completed it's the most straightforward the most like mimetic of kafka's novels it's my least favorite of his material but that is saying essentially nothing... I think it's great

it starts out promisingly starts off as a satire of gender politics in the late 60s early 70s and then gets into some really like stale Space Opera there are some interesting ideas in there are some good characters and then I think the milk curdles around halfway through

book of the new Sun once again I'm putting it at B because well for a couple reasons one I'm too dumb to get it also because I'm a lazy reader and also because I'm a literary hipster and contrarian and I'm doing it for sport

there's one Proviso which is it gets into sexual territory that is rather difficult it's a satire of late 60s free love but I think just to characterize it as that is to robit of its depth and complexity

I thought that it was decent the characterization I think is a little bit weak it is a little bit over long but the ideas in it the World building in it is really good

I like the weird fiction elements I like the cosmic horror elements the wish fulfillment does not connect with me a lot of this stuff squaks me out it's got a lot of problems I'm not going to relitigate it's just not my kind of thing

is excellent It's the middle book in the urban disaster Trilogy that goes crash concrete Islands highrise I like high-rise a little more than this... it seems to be mostly to my mind a book about relationships

it is his third full novel it's about teleportation if you teleport your body it creates a double... pretty cool premise I like it more than puppies of teror

an all fell team of scientists land on an alien world... it ends up in a good place posing pretty tough moral questions with a lot of creepy atmosphere

it is way above the average of most sword and sorcery stuff or stuff in that pulpy part of genre fiction that I have come across this is two novelas both of them are excellent the second one is great

there is interesting biographical background about his childhood growing up in Bavaria that actually reads like fantasy... that part of the book is really wonderful and really beautiful... if he didn't get as caught up in being verer Herzog I think that this would have been a better book

very good book I compare this actually very favorably to the bester novels clearly I think it's better than demolished man... it's about a power struggle between an aristocracy that rules these underwater doed cities and the people exceptionally strong writing for that period of time

this book is excellent if you're into hard science fiction then I think you would resonate with this especially if you're into Peter Watts

it is the most accessible I would say probably the least difficult the least thorny of the material that I've read from them it's not my favorite straty but it's the strugatsky so it's good

this is still my favorite piece of crime fiction described it as existentialist crime fiction some really gorgeous writing in it

he's a poet who was one of the architects of beat poetry and I think the source material is better than caroak and Ginsburg very important person to me and I still I still really resonate with his view of the world

pretty weird book it gets religiously a bit dactic towards the end but it hits that note of the Ethereal weirdness beauty that I like in this older fantasy

also a truly hair raising harrowing book... one of the most brutal violent and disturbing books that I've ever touched

midworld by Foster an old favorite that sucks ass this was on the first top 15 as the first book number 15 and reread it for the first time since I was a kid and yeah it's pretty bad

even less happens in this than in this the plot is pretty similar this is more spiritual musings about big existential questions around eternal life and art and love... it was a struggle to get through it but it's booed and Redeemed by some passages of it that are just amazing

s tier tough one to describe post-apocalyptic stories about Waring cyborgs who rule these keeps that launch nukes at each other in this plastic Wasteland written in this crazed fenetic Susan Pros... this is one of the most interesting books I've ever read

I tried palum sests that he co-wrote with someone else and did not care for it at all

it's one of the most famous novels ever to come out of Mexico... it's a rather Avant guard and difficult and symbolic piece of fiction that's like a ghost story... another one that's really rewarding I think that this is a quite a beautiful book

I described this as like reading a John Wick movie better than the John Wick movies... short book easy read and pretty gripping I liked it

the final story which is a science fiction retelling of Beauty and the Beast is phenomenal such a good book story rather feels like reading a book there's a couple other stories in here that are really good

I thought this hit a lot of the satire right in the center of the bullseye there's a lot in there that I think is incredibly smart I think that this foresaw a lot of stuff that was to follow

cool premise some of the opening action when they get to the planet is pretty great... the rest of it really sort of dumb to me I don't know I didn't really connect with this so well

I'll actually put it C because the first two stories I still think are really good mother and daughter are the titles... the rest of it can kick rocks

I think if I had to render an answer of my favorite Ballard it would be superon... just an amazing brutal harrowing and philosophically really quite meaningful book

he has this way of writing where it's not it's not trying to be funny it's not trying to be poetic or profound or meaningful he's not self- mythologizing at all... one of my favorite non-fiction books I think that's one of my favorite Memoirs ever

there's a bunch of stuff in there that's just completely fabricated it's all fabricated Matt agree to disagree this is especially pulpy and sensationalist... I would not recommend reading it

this is a complete Hall of Famer it's about a media company exploiting this chronically ill woman to be the subject of something like a reality television show... Compton is an incredible writer

I don't like it as much as stars my destination I think it traffics way too much in Freudian psychoanalytic terminology... I don't know it just didn't quite click with me I know that it's a classic but this is not on my Mount Rushmore

Joanna Russ I would have to say probably top three best Pros writers in all of genre fiction she is virtually Untouchable in my mind... female man is her most famous book arguably her Masterpiece and I'm not really going to argue

I hadn't read it since I was a teenager and it had a lot more issues than I remember the big one I think is the plot is segmented into three acts in my memory the First Act is incredible it's excellent the other two are not as good

very cool premise it gets bogged down in exposition which tends to happen in hard SF generally and can tend to happen with watts and Watts has a really acidic writing style that worked really well in blindsight I don't think that it worked as well here

another pot boiler it's like dick is two completely different writers... it's all of the big tropes and they're all smashed together and then smashed in your face an example of him needing to calm down

another weird book it falls all the way apart after the first third or half... first half is pretty good... great premise execution lacking in spots

I adore I adore very good chance this winds up on the next top 15... the writing is almost Indescribable it so good it's so rich and inventive

Return of the King by tolken pretty good Two Towers is my favorite bit of Lord of the Rings I think I like The Hobbit more than Lord of the Rings

I think corn bluth's solo work is better than this... some of the satire does not land anymore at least not for me I don't know there just wasn't a whole lot there

book written by a British plumber who is asterisk allegedly pretending to be a Tibetan llama makes up a bunch of about Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism and con a generation this book sucks

the two of them by Russ I think would be the only Russ book that I would put in the a tier... I think this is my least favorite of them it is her final science fiction novel... it's still an amazing book especially the final couple chapters

I love Margaret stclair she is a way underrated writer of mostly short stories she was a nudest Wiccan has just an amazing amount of range this is a compilation of her short fiction

most of it is not that good most of it is rather pretentious the Highlight is a sequence of stories called the Hall of machines... I don't know that I really like Jones's writing all that much I think this is mostly skiable

I don't really remember that much about it sort of has the feel of a best novel or maybe this it's a pretty decent Space Opera about an alien suit an outfit that gives its wearer certain abilities

I've described this a couple of times as being a Flawless book there's nothing that I can point to in it that I dislike... eminently readable smart Snappy

I covered this in the top five worst books I've read this year video... there's a couple short stories in there that are decent so I don't that probably was unfair we'll put it at D there's just some material in here that I find unbelievably obnoxious

philosopher stone by Colin Wilson I got to say Still d talked about this in great detail feelings about this are pretty negative

this is the most challenging technically science fiction book I ever read... even though it was so frustrating and Challen or maybe because it was so frustrating and challenging I found it a very rewarding reading experience

this is pretty disjointed deals with questions around Consciousness and personhood with robotics that by the early 90s had become fairly trit it's written episodically and nonlinearly

in some senses I like it more than Lord of the Rings... however in Parts surprisingly gruesome other sections of it descriptions of landscape philosophical musing beautiful gorgeous Pros other parts Long sections of it punishingly dull long book interesting book I think I recommend it

I was not as sweet on much prefer St on Zanzibar to this gets pretty redundant... however reading them all back to back gets pretty boring

one of his pot boiler novels... this is one of those pieces of not so great work some bits of this are pretty funny some of the writing is truly God awful and there's a romance in here that I think is one of the worst I've ever read

it has actually a great introduction by azimov that is one of the highlights of the book the other bits of it I think just are not as good